Color Club Wham! Pow!

I am loving pretty pale spring colors, but let's not forget the brights and neons!! Perfect for summer, intense brights and retina-scorching neons in all sorts of amazing colors, please!! Color Club's POPtastic, one of three collections they released for spring 2010, delivers these bright flourescent colors and then some.

I LOVE this collection! The colors literally POP right off your fingernails....but unfortunately, they tend to pop off my camera lens, which cannot accurate capture the intensity and color of neons.

I'll start with the accurately named "Wham! Pow!" because this highlighter orange does show up fairly accurately in my pictures. tt's basically an intense, super-bright bold orange neon. SUCH FUN!

In the sunlight:

You know it's neon when it glows this bright in the dark for a picture!! This is outdoors but in the shade.

Like many neons, this polish is rather sheer and shows visible nail line after 2 or 3 coats. I decided to experiment with a fairly opaque white polish on my index finger to compare. I was very pleased with the results....no nail line! But looking at my pictures, I realize that the color is altered to a lighter color. Phooey! I don't mind the different color, but capturing the true color but using an undercoat to cover the nail line would be the ideal. Suggestions and tips welcome, please!

Index finger with the white and ring finger with just Wham! Pow! (I tried black on the middle finger, and that did NOT work at ALL! So I am refraining from showing it).

I had some spillage of the white polish into the side of my nail, there, so it looks a bit messy, begging everyone's pardon!

The first pic of the white undercoated index finger is in shade, and the second one is in the sun. You can definitely see the difference. If you want a perfect WHAM! POW! neon orange, however, Wham! Pow! from Color Club certainly fills the bill.

OPI Hot and Spicy

I haven't posted in a few days...I must confess something, actually. I've been a bit distracted by trying to decide on a possible handbag order! Yep. You can turn the handbag addict into a nail polish addict, but you can't take the handbag addict out of the nail polish addict! Er, or something to that effect.

It rained all weekend, but I still have much to post from my picture-taking last weekend when it was nice and sunny. The lovely rijaH of Polishing the Nails! voted for some OPI Hong Kong Collection, so I will start off with the intriguing "Hot and Spicy," a creamsicle red-orange color.

I first thought "creamsicle orange" when I saw this polish in the bottle, but it really is more of a creamsicle red-orange. The color is vibrant but still has a pale, muted quality to it. It is the color of Buffalo sauce, sort of. Well, even if muted it's definitely spicy! Let's start off indoors.

The latter picture shows that creamsicle muted quality, while the top picture shows it at its most vibrant. Moving outdoors into the sunlight, then! Onward!

And, in the shade:

I am fascinated with this interesting color! Just to demonstrate the pale red-orange quality, I tried on a vibrant straight orange "Get the Fever 09" from Essence. Below, indoors, you can see the difference between a true vivid orange and "Hot and Spicy."

My parting shot is the comparison between the Essence and Hot and Spicy in the direct sunlight. Sure, it's paler than straight orange, but there definitely is a spicy quality to Hot and Spicy. It definitely goes with the coral tones one is seeing this spring.

Quickie Essence Swatches - Oranges and Pinks

  

I tried on most of the Essence mini polishes that I got from ULTA, and I've divided it up into color families. Today I have the oranges and pinks that I got. (Oops, I will have to update this post later with the specific names of the polishes!)

The oranges:

  

 

The pink-toned:

  

  

On my thumb, kind of a peachy orange:

  

Altogether now! 

 

  

  

  

  

Two closeups, below, the oranges on index and middle, then pinkie-toned on ring and pinky fingers.

 

Aren't these colors HOT!!?? I found they applied nicely, although I haven't attempted more than just bushing on crude swatches. They are also pretty opaque, with the pictures showing a couple of coats and a tiny bit of visible nail line peeking out. I'll have some more pictures of the purply ones and an assortment of green, yellow, and two blues!!!

Orly Ginger Lily

Okay, time to start the reveal of the Orly Bloom collection. I've warmed up to this selection of colors quite a lot from my original ambivalence. I bought four out of six colors, and Ginger Lily is the only shimmery one. Ginger Lily is a darker reddish-orange. A burnt reddish orange?


Below, again, we have Ginger Lily on my ring fingernail, with China Glaze Free Love on the middle and Cruising on the index. Phew! I was glad that I hadn't bought just another straight orange color. I was shocked to see how orange it was when I first applied it. Comparatively, though, Ginger Lily is the dark reddish orange I thought it would be.

And, here it is! Below, I think it is quite beautiful when shown indoors. The shimmer comes across as a bit of a glow.


Moving outdoors, but still in the shade, the reddish tone comes out more. It's almost a paprika color. I'm using Orly In a Snap quick drying top coat, which gave a nice gloss to the finish.






Now, moving out into the snowbank outside my back door (lol!) let's get some direct sunlight on the subject. Now the color is glowing even more paprika red. Spicy!!











There ya go! Is this a spring color?? I think it's a nice fall color, or a late summer into fall color. It's fine for winter. Spring? Well, I was surprised to see burnt orange offered by my two favorite independent handbag designers last spring 2009 (Ignes and Belen Echandia). I did see the burnt orange colors in stores for spring, though. My Ignes burnt orange bag has a golden sheen to it; it's nothing like this dark orange tinged with shimmery paprika red of Orly Ginger Lily.

That's what puzzles me about this collection from Orly. The "Bloom" colors seem more summery. Or fall. Maybe releasing it first gives you the opportunity to wear the strong, dark colors in the winter, I don't know! Orly's upcoming "Sweet" collection has lovely pastels with matching lipgloss. Perfect for early spring (on into summer). Why didn't that come out first?

Well, no matter, I'm catching onto Bloom, and I really like Ginger Lily.

Which of These Things is Not Like the Other?

That's right, not every fingernail has the same polish. One of them is different. Which one is the different one? Extra Brownie points if you can guess the different polishes used. Both have been featured or mentioned in my blog so far.


If you think you know, leave the answer in the comments!! Answers will be posted tonight or early tomorrow, Eastern Standard Time.

Look of the Day!!

Ha! I just got things off my chest with the whole August is still summer, and so is September. And this morning it was so cool outside, and again when I left work this evening. Love it! Okay, it's fall! Well, I know it will go back to boiling hot, but I think this is bearing out my belief that September is the true transition month to full-on fall.

Last Wednesday I switched my new Orange Belen Echandia handbag to my Ignes Petra in soft maize, a wonderful pale yellow, silky soft leather and a soft contrast to the pink I was wearing. Nail noob: lavender nails, using Essie's St. Lucia Lilac---so pretty! Lovely contrast to pale yellow and coordinating with the purple lining. I was in the throes of my "it's summer, not a transition month!" At the time, it felt great, and in retrospect it sounds like an Easter egg look!! The following day, the yellow bag and lilac nails went with chocolate brown.


See more pics of my Ignes Petra in my Purse Forum reveal.

My Barielle nail colors arrived on Thursday, so on Friday: Barielle Polished Princess with a matte topcoat---love!! Um, no NOTD pictures, hmm, I messed up.

Today I had to get back to my new orange love (the BE handbag, in case that's not clear, lol!). But what nails? I had spent the weekend swatching and playing with all my new nail colors, and in the end, I went with a medium gray (Essie's "Chinchilly"), a top with blue and two greys, and the orange bag with an orange wool scarf inside for my overly airconditioned office.

Well, I needed a bit more orange, I thought. But what?? My shawl....and my eyeshadow!! I decided to try out the new matte HIP Duo in Poppy (previously swatched here), but instead of the chocolate brown in the duo, I would use gray!! Ha! How coordinated is that. So, the pale orangey color plus my new "Revolver" from Urban Decay.


Well, I am not terribly happy about posting pics of my face, but hey! You can't really talk about look of the day without showing in addition to the telling. I have an eye shape that is apparently call the "hooded eye." I don't have a clearly defined eyelid. I just learned this a few months back from a Prescriptives makeup person, who told me to apply shadow in the outer crease and not to put it in the crease area at the top of the eye. I've since seen some YouTube videos addressing eye shapes (although not a lot of the YouTube "gurus" have this same eye situation that I do). I don't know if it's age happening or if I have always had this hooded eye.

I applied the orange on my lid, which will only be visible when I close my eyes or lower my lids---soo the impact of this color is minimized. I then used a crease brush to put the gray in the outer corner crease. I lined my eyes with slate gray eye pencil and used black-brown mascara (L'Oreal Telescopic).

So, here I am at the end of a long day. Looking straight ahead, hood and all. You can't really see too much, but my eyes look blue!

My eyes also have a puffy and baggy tendency, especially on Mondays! Here is a view showing more of the shadows. The shadows definitely both had staying power.


How about a nice view of my newbie nails, with the one that broke off this morning!! Eyes closed.


From the pictures, I can tell that I got a little orange above the lid in the inner corner. I like the idea, for my hooded eye shape, of keeping a bright lid color just on the lid so that it's almost a surprise or just a fleeting image. The color is still there, though, to help the blueness pop. Supposedly, anyway! Gray is really my go-to color for highlighting blue eyes, so it's nice insurance if the orange just looks like, say, skin irritation, and doesn't do its job here.